This field is paved with money

The Cleveland Indians are the latest to prove the adage that you can’t stop progress.

The team’s stadium, called Jacobs Field for the last 14 years, will now be called Progressive Field after the Indians signed a naming-rights agreement with the Cleveland-based insurance company Progressive Corp.

The “Jake,” with a seating capacity of 43,000, opened in 1994 and was named after former owners Richard and David Jacobs.

Progressive said it would pay an average of $3.6 million a year over the 16-year term of the agreement, or $57.6 million.

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Trivia time

Where did the Indians play before 1994?

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Backup quarterback

Seattle quarterback Matt Hasselbeck, who squares off against Brett Favre today when the Seahawks play in Green Bay in an NFL divisional playoff game, recalled his own early days with the Packers.

Hasselbeck said that as a rookie on Green Bay’s practice squad a decade ago, he looked inside his team mailbox one day and was thrilled.

“The first [letter] that wasn’t from my mom!” he recalled thinking.

Then he opened it.

The letter read: “I’d really appreciate it if you could get Brett Favre’s autograph for me.”

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Speaking of signing

Former NFL stars Eric Dickerson, Deacon Jones and Merlin Olsen were among 18 NFL Hall of Fame players who set a Guinness world record for the “largest autograph signing” by pro athletes.

The event Wednesday at the Venetian Resort Hotel Casino in Las Vegas also included Marcus Allen, Michael Irvin and Fred Belitnikoff.

They signed 4,500 footballs and other items to raise awareness for various charities, including the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Las Vegas, the Dan Marino Foundation and the Pro Football Hall of Fame Enshrinees Assistance Program.

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American ringer

A Chinese basketball team has been docked points and tossed from the national playoffs for fielding an American who pretended to be local.

The 27-year-old player, whose name has not been disclosed, actually was a Chinese-American with a fake identity card who was a guard for the Xinjiang Guanghui team, Reuters News Service quoted the state media as saying.

Apparently he wasn’t hard to spot: At 5-7, he was the shortest player in the league.

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Speaking of short

Some days are definitely worse than others. Just ask the St. Louis University men’s basketball team.

The team scored a paltry 20 points Thursday in its loss to George Washington, which whipped the Billikens by scoring 49.

St. Louis set a modern-day record for fewest points in a Division I game, and it was the lowest point total since the shot clock was introduced 22 years ago, according to the Washington Post.

After the drubbing, Coach Rick Majerus zeroed in on the problem, saying: “We had some issues.”

By the way, what’s a Billiken? It’s an ancient, chubby figure with pixie ears, fat cheeks and a wide grin that’s a symbol of good luck. Small statuettes of the figure were popular in the early 1900s and made by the Billiken Company of Chicago.

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Trivia answer

The Indians for decades had played in Cleveland Municipal Stadium. The facility is remembered by Ballparks.com as a “cold, cramped, mammoth” park with a whopping 74,000 seats that many called “The Mistake by the Lake,” as in Lake Erie.

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And finally

After reading Briefing’s mention of how the New England Patriots were originally called the Boston Patriots, reader Marc Viens reminded us another bit of team trivia.

In early 1971, the NFL team dropped Boston from its name and briefly became the Bay State Patriots. But fans and the media recoiled at the prospect of the team being dubbed the “B.S. Patriots,” so the franchise quickly switched to New England.

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james.peltz@latimes.com